HOW depressing that two reports this week have found women want nothing more from life than to be a load of old spongers.

The first study claims that, despite the sacrifices of the Suffragettes and decades of bra-burning and campaigning by the women’s ­movement, all the fairer sex want is to marry a rich man and look after him. Of course everyone will have different ambitions, but it’s hard to imagine a man stating that his life goal would be to marry a rich woman.

In school, girls consistently ­out-perform boys in exams; 51% of girls now go on to university, compared to just 40% of male students.

More women than men are now qualifying as lawyers and doctors with the potential for lucrative careers, and, anyway, anyone with a brain knows women are simply smarter than men. No argument.

Even more discouraging than the sacrifice of all that grey matter for a life of domestic bliss and the occasional pair of ­expensive shoes on hubby’s credit card though, is the news from the second study which shows most young girls want to “be famous”.

The majority of young boys, by the way, state their top ambition as wanting to “be rich”, ­presumably so they can attract the girls who want to be famous.

What the girls who want to be famous forget is that to achieve their goal usually involves putting in a fair amount of hard slog – step forward Katie Price, Victoria Beckham – unless you’re reasonably good-looking and marry a ­footballer.

Maybe part of the problem stems from the findings of a third report, out yesterday, which depressingly claims nearly half of women regret going to university, which isn’t surprising when you take into consideration that once women have gone on to further education and outperformed their male ­counterparts they end up earning, on average, 16% less per hour then men in full-time employment.

On top of this they’re still vastly outnumbered at the highest echelons of almost every high-paying profession and if they choose to take maternity leave when the time comes, it very often has a negative effect on their career despite all the hard work and experience they’ve clocked up.

So maybe it would be easier to marry a rich man.

And maybe wanting to be famous isn’t such a bad idea after all – it’s one of the few areas where women are paid on a par with men and with enough money to be able to hire a full-time nanny there’s no worry over having to take maternity leave and ruin a promising career.

You know what? Maybe it’s none of the above.

What’s wrong with wanting to stay at home and look after the family anyway? Isn’t that what women are supposed to do?